SATURDAY 24 NOVEMBER 2018

SAT 19:00 The Secret History of Our Streets (b04ck993)
Series 2

Duke Street, Glasgow

BBC Two's multi-award-winning Secret History of Our Streets told the story of six London streets, from Victorian times to the present day.

Now, as its people stand at a crossroads in their history, the series travels to Scotland to tell the stories of three archetypal streets in Scotland's three great cities: Edinburgh, Glasgow and Aberdeen.

Endlessly surprising and not at all what you would expect, the stories of these streets are the story of a nation.

Duke Street is Britain's longest street, running from Glasgow city centre through the heart of Glasgow's East End. Elegant Victorian tenement blocks line the road to the south of Duke Street. Yet just 40 years ago, those tenements were under threat. This is the story of how a group of pioneering residents took on the Glasgow Corporation in a battle to save their homes.


SAT 20:00 Operation Gold Rush with Dan Snow (b082w0zw)
Series 1

Lakes and Rivers

Having made their way through Alaskan coastal mountains, Dan and his team now attempt to cross waterways featuring unpredictable weather and turbulent rapids. The journey is made even more treacherous by the fact they will be using a basic wooden boat, built according to original designs from the time of the gold rush.

They must then paddle hundreds of miles along the mighty Yukon River to reach Dawson City, gateway to the Klondike.


SAT 21:00 Beck (b0bt10d9)
The Devil's Attorney

Martin Beck investigates the murder of a restaurant owner.

In Swedish with English subtitles.


SAT 22:30 Radio 2 In Concert (b0bsrsnp)
Emeli Sandé

Multiple Brit Award-winning singer and songwriter Emeli Sandé established herself as one of the UK's most exciting artists in 2012, with the release of her debut album Our Version of Events. The album spent a total of ten weeks at number one and was the bestselling album of 2012 in the UK. Her follow-up Long Live the Angels came in 2016 and featured the singles Hurts and Breathing Underwater. Expect songs from both of her big-selling albums in the intimate setting of the BBC Radio Theatre in London.


SAT 23:30 David Cassidy: The Last Session (b0bshqks)
This candid biography explores the life of David Cassidy, the 70s pop idol and TV star. The film includes never-before-heard audio interviews with David from 1976 and a raw and poignantly filmed final recording session shortly before his death.

Cassidy's role as singer Keith Partridge in the 1970s sitcom The Partridge Family brought fame and fortune and made him a global teen sensation. David Cassidy: The Last Session tells the inside story of his explosive rise to fame, his conflicted relationships with his father and his own celebrity, and the legacy he left behind.


SAT 00:55 Top of the Pops (b0bsqck6)
Gary Davies and Simon Mayo present the pop chart programme, first broadcast on 9 October 1986. Featuring The Bangles, Nick Berry, Julian Cope, Paul Young, Howard Jones, Madonna and Paul Simon.


SAT 01:30 The Secret History of Our Streets (b04ck993)
[Repeat of broadcast at 19:00 today]


SAT 02:30 Blackadder (p00bf6md)
Blackadder Goes Forth

Plan A - Captain Cook

Edmund cheats to win a competition to be named Official War Artist, thinking it's his ticket out of the trenches. So he's furious when his reward turns out to be going into no man's land to sketch the German positions.


SAT 03:00 Blackadder (p00bf6pz)
Blackadder Goes Forth

Plan B - Corporal Punishment

Blackadder faces court martial for eating a carrier pigeon. With the pigeon's owner Melchett as judge and Darling as prosecutor, Edmund is relying on George and Baldrick to save his skin.



SUNDAY 25 NOVEMBER 2018

SUN 19:00 A History of Christianity (b00nxmmn)
Orthodoxy - From Empire to Empire

Today, Eastern Orthodox Christianity flourishes in the Balkans and Russia, with over 150 million members worldwide. It is unlike Catholicism or Protestantism - worship is carefully choreographed, icons pull the faithful into a mystical union with Christ, and everywhere there is a symbol of a fierce-looking bird, the double-headed eagle. What story is this ancient drama trying to tell us?

In the third part of his journey into the history of Christianity, Professor Diarmaid MacCulloch charts Orthodoxy's extraordinary fight for survival. After its glory days in the eastern Roman Empire, it stood right in the path of Muslim expansion, suffered betrayal by crusading Catholics, was seized by the Russian tsars and faced near-extinction under Soviet communism.

MacCulloch visits the greatest collection of early icons in the Sinai desert, a surviving relic of the iconoclastic crisis in Istanbul and Ivan the Terrible's cathedral in Moscow to discover the secret of Orthodoxy's endurance.


SUN 20:00 Jazzology with Soweto Kinch (b0bsrws5)
In New Orleans, New York and London, saxophonist Soweto Kinch meets and plays with fellow musicians and discovers a music that's political, spiritual and rooted in African American history.

Soweto argues that jazz is too often seen as a sterile museum piece, whereas in reality it's a powerful, political music which can only be understood through the history of racism and inequality from which it emerged.

In New Orleans he finds an older music rooted in the history of slavery. He meets saxophonist Donald Harrison Jr, who keeps alive the tradition of the Mardi Gras Indians, and joins Donald and his group the Congo Square Nation, who perform music influenced by African drumming and rhythms. Soweto meets musician and writer Nicholas Payton and trumpeter and composer Terence Blanchard. Both talk about how jazz emerged from the struggle of African Americans to form a new language in a country where racism and segregation gave them few outlets for self-expression. Jazz is rooted in the blues and throughout its history has straddled the secular and the spiritual. Soweto plays along with pianist Marcus Roberts, and meets singer Carmen Lundy.

Soweto then visits New York, which by the 1930s was firmly established as the centre of the jazz world. In Harlem, Soweto find traces of the city's jazz history but also discovers New York's contemporary scene. He meets singer and bassist Esperanza Spalding and saxophonist Donny McCaslin, who featured on David Bowie's album Blackstar. Michael Mwenso blends jazz, soul and swing and Soweto joins him for a live session.

In London Soweto meets Courtney Pine, who was part of a movement of black British jazz musicians in the 1980s who revived the art form and inspired successive generations. Lastly, Soweto meets the latest wave of British jazz musicians including Shabaka Hutchings from Sons of Kemet, Cassie Kinoshi of Nerija and Giacomo Smith of Kansas Smitty's House Band. All are rooted in jazz traditions but also draw upon contemporary influences such as grime and dubstep.


SUN 21:00 BBC Young Musician (b0bsrws7)
2018

Jazz Final

Josie d'Arby is joined by saxophonist and composer YolanDa Brown to present the final of BBC Young Jazz Musician 2018.

Five of the UK's most promising young performers compete for this coveted title in front of a judging panel featuring some of the jazz world's finest: pianist Monty Alexander, composer and pianist Zoe Rahman, bassist Gary Crosby (founding member of Jazz Warriors), singer Zara McFarlane and saxophonist and composer Iain Ballamy. With the competition firmly established in the jazz calendar, the final moves to London and the Southbank Centre's Queen Elizabeth Hall as part of the capital's Jazz Festival.

The finalists are pianists Reuben Goldmark and Fergus McCreadie, saxophonist Xhosa Cole, and bassists James Owston and Seth Tackaberry. They will be mentored by and perform with leading jazz musicians bassist Paula Gardner and drummer Asaf Sirkis, and led by pianist Gwilym Simcock.


SUN 23:00 Rich Hall's Countrier Than You (b08j8lqb)
Award-winning comedian Rich Hall takes a country music journey from Tennessee to Texas to look at the movements and artists that don't get as much notoriety but have helped shape the genre over the years.

With the help of prominent performers and producers including Michael Martin Murphey, Robbie Fulks and Ray Benson, Rich explores the early origins of country music in Nashville and Austin. He visits the rustic studios where this much-loved sound was born and discovers how the genre has reinvented itself with influences from bluegrass, western swing and Americana.

Rich also explores how the music industries differ between these two cities and how they each generated their own distinct twist on the genre, from cosmic country and redneck country to the outlaw artists of the 1970s. Through Working Dog, a three-minute self-penned soap opera about a collie dog, Rich illustrates how different styles can change.

As he unearths the roots and inner workings of country music, Rich finds it's more than just music - it's a lifestyle.


SUN 00:30 Lucy Worsley: Mozart's London Odyssey (b07hk1qx)
Lucy Worsley traces the forgotten and fascinating story of the young Mozart's adventures in Georgian London. Arriving in 1764 as an eight-year-old boy, London held the promise of unrivalled musical opportunity. But in telling the tale of Mozart's strange and unexpected encounters, Lucy reveals how life wasn't easy for the little boy in a big bustling city.

With the demands of a royal performance, the humiliation of playing keyboard tricks in a London pub, a near fatal illness and finding himself heckled on the streets, it was a lot for a child to take. But London would prove pivotal, for it was here that the young Mozart made his musical breakthrough, blossoming from a precocious performer into a powerful new composer.

Lucy reveals that it was on British soil that Mozart composed his first ever symphony and, with the help of a bespoke performance, she explores how Mozart's experiences in London inspired his colossal achievement. But what should have earned him rapturous applause and the highest acclaim ended in suspicion, intrigue and accusations of fraud.


SUN 01:30 Giselle: Belle of the Ballet (b08l6nr6)
Tamara Rojo, dancer and artistic director of English National Ballet, explores Giselle - the first great Romantic ballet, and a defining role for any ballerina.

Through two radically contrasting 2016 productions - a traditional 19th-century recreation, and a gritty reimagining of the work by celebrated Anglo-Bangladeshi choreographer Akram Khan - Rojo examines the cultural and social background to the ballet's genesis in 1840s Paris, and the spiritual themes that have fuelled its success over the last 175 years.

Giselle is the story of a young peasant girl who personifies all that is good in life, and ultimately forgives the aristocrat who has seduced and betrayed her.

With Giselle, the look and emotional heart of ballet was transformed forever, from mime-based storytelling to a fusion of emotion, music and movement, formulating a tradition that has inspired audiences, dancers and choreographers ever since.


SUN 02:30 Jazzology with Soweto Kinch (b0bsrws5)
[Repeat of broadcast at 20:00 today]



MONDAY 26 NOVEMBER 2018

MON 19:00 Beyond 100 Days (b0bsvz54)
Series 1

26/11/2018

Katty Kay in Washington and Christian Fraser in London return to report on the events that are shaping the world.


MON 19:30 University Challenge (b04ww16l)
Christmas 2014

Episode 4

This match features notable graduates from two more top UK universities who battle it out for a place in the semi-finals. The University of Edinburgh team includes writer Philippa Gregory and BBC correspondent Allan Little and the University of Leeds team features ITV News Europe Editor James Mates and sports broadcaster Jacqui Oatley. Jeremy Paxman asks the questions.


MON 20:00 Hidden Wales with Will Millard (b0bsrhh2)
Series 1

Episode 1

In this three part series, writer and adventurer Will Millard discovers the hidden history of Wales by exploring forgotten, secret and usually inaccessible locations that show the country as you've never seen it before.

On an intriguing, exhilarating and sometimes dangerous journey, Hidden Wales with Will Millard offers unprecedented access to places you rarely get to see. Starting in the north and working his way south, Will reveals natural wonders hidden beneath the landscape, the abandoned buildings that tell us where Wales has come from and the modern marvels of engineering that show what the country might become.

In this first episode, Will begins his tour around Wales in the north of the country. From the biggest abandoned slate mine in the world to a forgotten mansion concealed in a wood, and from a decommissioned nuclear power station to a Victorian invention lying at the bottom of the sea, Will uncovers historical gems in parts of north of Wales you never knew existed. It could also be your last chance to see some of the Welsh history that is vanishing right in front of us.


MON 21:00 Treasures of Ancient Rome (p00wpvpr)
Warts 'n' All

Alastair Sooke traces how the Romans during the Republic went from being art thieves and copycats to pioneering a new artistic style - warts 'n' all realism. Roman portraits reveal what the great names from history, men like Julius Caesar and Cicero, actually looked like. Modern-day artists demonstrate the ingenious techniques used to create these true to life masterpieces in marble, bronze and paint.

We can step back into the Roman world thanks to their invention of the documentary-style marble relief and to a volcano called Vesuvius. Sooke explores the remarkable artistic legacy of Pompeii before showing how Rome's first emperor, Augustus, used the power of art to help forge an empire.


MON 22:00 Storyville (b0btc456)
Hurt Locker Hero

The heart-stopping story of 'Crazy Fakhir', a Kurdish colonel in the Iraqi army and legendary bomb disposal expert who single-handedly disarmed thousands of landmines across the country with just a pocket knife and a pair of wire clippers.

Between the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003 and the chaos and destruction wreaked by IS ten years later, Fahkir's unwavering bravery saved thousands of lives throughout Iraq. 'Hurt Locker Hero' tells Fakhir's story through the raw and visceral amateur footage captured by his soldiers on a camcorder intended for filming family occasions. Instead, it records Fakhir endlessly snipping wires, searching family homes and digging out roadside IEDs, insisting it's too dangerous to wait hours for the highly trained American bomb disposal teams to arrive.

Whilst their father and husband becomes a hero, Fahkir's wife and eight children struggle to make ends meet and worry endlessly about his safety. Fakhir will be remembered as the man who risked his life to save others -'If I fail, only I die, but if I succeed, I can save hundreds of people.'.


MON 23:25 Long Shadow (b04kkbg2)
Ballots and Bullets

David Reynolds examines the intriguing paradox of the Great War - that it was not caused by profound political or ideological divisions but created them in its wake. He looks at how the conflict made politics red hot, giving birth to an age of turbulent mass democracy.

Democracy, Reynolds argues, hit postwar Europe like a big bang. He traces how, in the immediate aftermath of war, monarchies toppled, the people rose up and three iconic leaders - Vladimir Lenin, Woodrow Wilson and Benito Mussolini - emerged with competing visions of people power that polarised much of continental Europe between right and left in the 1920s and 1930s.

Britain's experience was very different. In Britain the socialist Labour Party could be absorbed into the political mainstream and the monarchy under King George V was repackaged as a symbol of the nation. For Britain, this was an era of political coalitions headed by Stanley Baldwin and Ramsay MacDonald, parliamentarians who reached for the centre ground and quietly squeezed out extremists like Oswald Mosley and charismatic politicians like Winston Churchill.

Through richly visual sequences comparing the experience of France, Italy and Britain, at locations including the battlefield of Caporetto now in Slovenia, the National Assembly in Paris and Buckingham Palace in London, this film re-examines the explosive impact of the Great War on European politics.


MON 00:25 Greek Myths: Tales of Travelling Heroes (b00vzxv9)
Eminent classical historian Robin Lane Fox embarks on a journey in search of the origins of the Greek myths. He firmly believes that these fantastical stories lie at the root of western culture, and yet little is known about where the myths of the Greek gods came from, and how they grew. Now, after 35 years of travelling, excavation and interpretation, he is confident he has uncovered answers.

From the ancient lost city of Hattusas in modern Turkey to the smouldering summit of the Sicilian volcano Mount Etna, the documentary takes the viewer on a dazzling voyage through the Mediterranean world of the 8th century BC, as we follow in the slipstream of an intrepid and mysterious group of merchants and adventurers from the Greek island of Euboea. It's in the experiences of these now forgotten people that Lane Fox is able to pinpoint the stories and encounters, the journeys and the landscapes that provided the source material for key Greek myths.

And along the way, he brings to life these exuberant tales - of castration and baby eating, the birth of human sexual love, and the titanic battles with giants and monsters from which the gods of Greek myth were to emerge victorious.


MON 01:55 Hidden Wales with Will Millard (b0bsrhh2)
[Repeat of broadcast at 20:00 today]


MON 02:55 Treasures of Ancient Rome (p00wpvpr)
[Repeat of broadcast at 21:00 today]



TUESDAY 27 NOVEMBER 2018

TUE 19:00 Beyond 100 Days (b0bsvzc9)
Series 1

27/11/2018

Katty Kay in Washington and Christian Fraser in London return to report on the events that are shaping the world.


TUE 19:30 University Challenge (b04ww1l6)
Christmas 2014

Episode 5

In another first round match Trinity Hall, Cambridge, including Dan Starkey who plays Strax in Doctor Who and Olympic gold medallist Tom James, face Balliol College, Oxford, with writer Charlotte Higgins and MP Sir Alan Beith. Jeremy Paxman asks the questions.


TUE 20:00 The Story of Wales (b01dczfc)
Furnace of Change

Huw Edwards presents this major television history of Wales, showing the country in ways it has never been seen before.

The Industrial Revolution turns Wales into a global player, bringing unimaginable wealth - and desperate poverty. From Parys Mountain on Anglesey to Copperopolis, Swansea, in the south, the copper trade transforms the landscape and economy. Iron does the same for Merthyr Tydfil, making it a world-class centre of technology. This brave new Wales fuels massive social turmoil, riots and uprisings - and leads to the first national demands for democracy and workers' rights.


TUE 21:00 Victoria: A Royal Love Story (b00rl81c)
Fiona Bruce traces the story of one of history's great royal love affairs: the love between Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. It was a love based on a powerful physical attraction, and it grew into a marriage that set the tone for the Victorian age.

Over the 20 years they spent together, until Albert's tragic death, they gave each other a dazzling collection of paintings, sculptures and jewellery. That collection was on show - much of it for the first time - at a major exhibition in London, and it reveals a new and passionate side of the royal couple.

Fiona meets HRH Prince Charles and travels to the royal palaces that Victoria and Albert made their own, as well as the royal workshops where artworks for the exhibition are being restored, to tell the story behind a collection that is one of the wonders of the nation.


TUE 22:00 Royal Cousins at War (p01pw8ds)
Into the Abyss

This episode looks at the realignment of the European powers and the emergence of the alliance system in the years following the death of Queen Victoria in 1901. It examines the key role played by royalty in smoothing the path to the Anglo-Russian entente of 1907 and the part played by the kaiser's erratic, unstable personality in the growing isolation of Germany in the years leading up to 1914.

It explores the role played by each of the three monarchs in the frantic, desperate days of July and August 1914. And it tells the tragic story of King George's refusal to grant his cousin and close friend Tsar Nicholas asylum in England following the Russian Revolution of 1917 - a refusal that would lead directly to the brutal murder of the tsar and his family by the Bolsheviks in the summer of 1918.


TUE 23:00 Britain's Lost Masterpieces (b097xrbq)
Series 2

Carmarthenshire

Carmarthenshire County Museum is a slice of history in itself. The building that houses it has been in continuous use since the 13th century. Once a bishop's palace, it was where the Bible was first translated into Welsh. But could it also be home to some mysterious cases of mistaken identity and two lost paintings from the time of Charles II?

Dr Bendor Grosvenor and Emma Dabiri travel to Carmarthenshire to investigate two intriguing portraits of a local nobleman and his wife, the Earl and Countess of Carbery, possibly painted by the great Sir Peter Lely in the 17th century.

Yet all is not as it seems - Bendor has a hunch that one of the portraits is by another hand. Could the portrait of the countess be a lost work by Mary Beale, Britain's first commercially successful female artist?

While Bendor gets to grips with the badly damaged portrait of the earl, Emma traces the story of how he survived the Civil War, how Mary Beale was written out of the history books, and discovers how the cross-dressing men of the Rebecca Riots stormed Carmarthen.


TUE 00:00 China's Terracotta Army (b007z998)
Dan Snow follows the making of the British Museum's biggest exhibition in a generation and tells the story of its subject, the first Emperor of China, Qin Shi Huangdi. One of the most important but least well-known men in history, Qin Shi Huangdi founded the world's oldest political entity and created the spectacular Terracotta Army to guard his vast tomb. With exclusive access to the British Museum team for over a year, Dan follows museum curator Jane Portal and the design team as they create the exhibition, and travels to China to see the original Great Wall, the sacred mountain Tai Shan and the necropolis at Xian with its thousands of warriors.


TUE 01:00 Inside Einstein's Mind: The Enigma of Space and Time (b06s75vs)
The story of the most elegant and powerful theory in science - Albert Einstein's general relativity.

When Einstein presented his formidable theory in November 1915, it turned our understanding of gravity, space and time completely on its head. Over the last 100 years, general relativity has enabled us to trace the origins of the universe to the Big Bang and to appreciate the enormous power of black holes.

To mark the 100th anniversary of general relativity, this film takes us inside the head of Einstein to witness how his idea evolved, giving new insights into the birth of a masterpiece that has become a cornerstone of modern science. This is not as daunting as it sounds - because Einstein liked to think in pictures. The film is a magical visual journey that begins in Einstein's young mind, follows the thought experiments that gave him stunning insights about the physical world, and ultimately reaches the extremes of modern physics.


TUE 02:00 Leonora Carrington: The Lost Surrealist (b09j0lp9)
British surrealist Leonora Carrington was a key part of the surrealist movement during its heyday in Paris and yet, until recently, remained a virtual unknown in the country of her birth. This film explores her dramatic evolution from British debutante to artist in exile, living out her days in Mexico City, and takes us on a journey into her darkly strange and cinematic world.


TUE 03:00 Victoria: A Royal Love Story (b00rl81c)
[Repeat of broadcast at 21:00 today]



WEDNESDAY 28 NOVEMBER 2018

WED 19:00 Beyond 100 Days (b0bsvzmt)
Series 1

28/11/2018

Katty Kay in Washington and Christian Fraser in London return to report on the events that are shaping the world.


WED 19:30 University Challenge (b04ww1sx)
Christmas 2014

Episode 6

In another first round match the University of York, featuring writer and broadcaster Adam Hart-Davis and archaeologist Helen Geake, face the University of Surrey, who include the presenter of Radio 4's The Life Scientific Jim Al-Khalili and writer Susan Blackmore. Jeremy Paxman asks the questions.


WED 20:00 Vikings (b01ms4xm)
Episode 1

Neil Oliver heads for Scandinavia to reveal the truth behind the legend of the Vikings. In the first programme, Neil begins by discovering the mysterious world of the Vikings' prehistoric ancestors. The remains of weapons-filled war boats, long-haired Bronze Age farmers and a Swedish site of a royal palace and gruesome pagan rituals conjure up an ancient past from which the Viking Age was to suddenly erupt.


WED 21:00 Digging for Britain (b0bt8vvf)
Series 7

North

Professor Alice Roberts celebrates the biggest and best archaeological discoveries of 2018 from the north of the UK. Each digging team has been filming its own excavations, giving us an unprecedented view of each excavation as it happens.

Alice begins the programme with a prehistoric Pompeii at the Black Loch of Myrton. Uncovering incredibly preserved 2500-year-old houses, archaeologists are stepping back in time and glimpsing what life was really like in an Iron Age village. We follow archaeologists uncovering a previously unknown Anglo-Saxon cemetery in Lincolnshire full of spectacular and unusual grave goods.

We go on the hunt for a lost Second World War reconnaissance Spitfire in Norway and piece together the story of its brave pilot.

Deep in the vaults at the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh, we explore one of its greatest treasures, the Westness Brooch. We also head to the island of Rousay in Orkney, where archaeologists rescue a Neolithic tomb before it gets washed away and discover an incredible trace of our ancestors on a rare Pictish stone.

In Salford, a major regeneration project is unearthing the largest jail in Georgian England and its radical approach to crime and punishment. Roving archaeologist, Raksha Dave gets privileged access behind the scenes in the conservation labs at Vindolanda Roman fort and discovers what really happens when the digging stops.


WED 22:00 Vic & Bob's Big Night Out (b0btkdx4)
Series 1

Episode 1

Comedy double-act Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer burst back onto TV screens with a new series of Big Night Out, a hilarious non-stop half-hour of mischief, fun and mayhem.

Kicking-off the first of this four part series, Vic and Bob interrupt a couple's cosy dinner date in the studio with a lively song and dance routine. Vic reveals his hitherto unseen circus skills and impressionist abilities, while Bob makes a very revealing confession to a reverend who might be hiding a secret himself.


WED 22:30 Inside No. 9 (b05p65sn)
Series 2

La Couchette

On board the sleeper from Paris to Bourg St Maurice, a motley collection of passengers try to get a quiet night's sleep as the train makes its way across France. But as the sleeping compartment fills up, the chances of that begin to look highly unlikely. In deuxieme classe, everyone can hear you scream.


WED 23:00 Nature's Wonderlands: Islands of Evolution (b06yjm68)
Hawaii: A New Eden

Three-part series in which Professor Richard Fortey investigates why islands are natural laboratories of evolution and meets some of the unique and remarkable species that live on them. Examining some of the crucial influences on natural selection that are normally overlooked - like geology, geography, isolation and time - the series reveals that there is much more to evolution than 'survival of the fittest'. Charting the lifecycle of islands - from their birth and colonisation to the flowering of evolutionary creativity that often accompanies their maturity, and what happens when an island grows old and nears its end - Fortey encounters wild lemurs in the rainforest of Madagascar, acid-resistant shrimps in the rock pools of Hawaii, and giant wolf spiders in Madeira as he searches for the hidden rules of island evolution.

In the first episode, Fortey is on Hawaii to investigate how life colonises a newly born island. According to some estimates, Hawaii has been successfully colonised by only one new species every 35,000 years due to its remote location - yet the Hawaiian Islands teem with a great diversity of life. In search of the evolutionary secrets of how one species becomes many, Fortey encounters beautiful honeycreeper birds whose evolution rivals that of Darwin's famous finches; carnivorous caterpillars who now can't eat leaves, and giant silversword plants that thrive in parched volcanic soil at 10,000 feet.


WED 00:00 An Art Lovers' Guide (b08nz05n)
Series 1

Amsterdam

With sumptuous palaces, exquisite artworks and stunning architecture, every great city offers a dizzying multitude of artistic highlights. In this series, art historians Dr Janina Ramirez and Alastair Sooke take viewers on three cultural city breaks, hunting for off-the-beaten-track artistic treats and finding new ways of enjoying some very famous sights.

In this opening episode, they head to Amsterdam, a city that pioneered so much of modern life, from multinational trade to the way we design our homes. To find out how, Alastair and Janina take us on a fast-paced tour of the city's cultural hotspots. Picking their way through the crowds queuing to see Rembrandt at the Rijksmuseum, they also introduce us to the paintings of Jan Steen, a Dutch legend whose paintings capture the city's freewheeling lifestyle.

They take us on an entertaining tour of the canals that helped build Amsterdam and explore the city's reputation for tolerance in the oldest surviving Jewish library in the world. Along the way, Alastair and Janina discover how art and culture reflect the liberal attitudes, appetite for global trade and love of home comforts that helped shape the character of this trailblazing city.


WED 01:00 Jonathan Meades: The Joy of Essex (b01qfr95)
Jonathan Meades is unleashed on the county of Essex. Contrary to its caricature as a bling-filled land of breast-enhanced footballer's wives and self-made millionaires, Meades argues that this is a county that defies definition - at once the home of picturesque villages, pre-war modernism and 19th-century social experiments.

Shaped by its closeness to London, Meades points out that this is where 19th-century do-gooders attempted to reform London's outcasts with manual labour and fresh air, from brewing magnate Frederick Charrington's Temperance Colony on Osea Island to the Christian socialist programmes run by Salvation Army founder William Booth.

Meades also discovers a land which abounds in all strains of architecture, from the modernist village created by paternalistic shoe giant Thomas Bata to Oliver Hill's masterplan to re-imagine Frinton-on-Sea and the bizarre but prescient work of Arthur Mackmurdo, whose exceptionally odd buildings were conceived in the full-blown language of the 1930s some fifty years earlier.

In a visually impressive and typically idiosyncratic programme, Meades provides a historical and architectural tour of a county that challenges everything you thought you knew and offers so much you didn't.


WED 02:00 Vikings (b01ms4xm)
[Repeat of broadcast at 20:00 today]


WED 03:00 Digging for Britain (b0bt8vvf)
[Repeat of broadcast at 21:00 today]



THURSDAY 29 NOVEMBER 2018

THU 19:00 Beyond 100 Days (b0bsvzvx)
Series 1

29/11/2018

Katty Kay in Washington and Christian Fraser in London return to report on the events that are shaping the world.


THU 19:30 Top of the Pops (b0bt4828)
Simon Bates and Steve Wright present the pop chart programme. First broadcast on 16 October 1986, this edition features Pet Shop Boys, Cliff Richard and Sarah Brightman, Boris Gardiner, Marti Webb, Paul Hardcastle, Nick Berry and Status Quo.


THU 20:00 A Year in the Wild (b01lvh65)
Cairngorms

The harsh beauty and surprising wildlife of Scotland's Cairngorms National Park through the eyes of the people who know it best.

The Cairngorms is Britain's largest and wildest National Park. A land of Arctic extremes in the heart of the Scottish highlands. Its granite mountains and ancient pine forests are home to some of our rarest and most spectacular animals, including golden eagles, ptarmigan, capercaillie, red deer and crested tits. This lyrical and thought-provoking film reveals the inner secrets of this wild landscape over a year through the eyes of individuals who know and love the Cairngorms: a mountain guide, an artist, a salmon ghillie, a gamekeeper and a nature writer.


THU 21:00 Operation Iceberg (p00tvcp0)
Series 1

Birth of a 'berg

In the first programme, the team uncover the hidden forces that explain why the Store Glacier of Greenland produces so many icebergs. Naturalist Chris Packham works with scientists on a research yacht in the danger zone at the front of the glacier, whilst ocean specialist Helen Czerski explores the inside of the glacier itself. During the expedition the team witness the creation of an iceberg as a multimillion-ton block of ice bursts forth from the glacier.


THU 22:00 Horizon (b02xcvhw)
2012-2013

The Secret Life of the Cat

Horizon discovers what your cat really gets up to when it leaves the cat flap.

In a groundbreaking experiment, 50 cats from a village in Surrey are tagged with GPS collars and their every movement is recorded, day and night, as they hunt in our backyards and patrol the garden fences and hedgerows.

The cats are also fitted with specially developed cat-cams which reveal their unique view of our world.

You may think you understand your pet, but their secret life is more surprising than we thought.


THU 23:00 Horizon (b00hr6bk)
2008-2009

Can We Make a Star on Earth?

Professor Brian Cox takes a global journey in search of the energy source of the future. Called nuclear fusion, it is the process that fuels the sun and every other star in the universe. Yet despite over five decades of effort, scientists have been unable to get even a single watt of fusion electricity onto the grid.

Brian returns to Horizon to find out why. Granted extraordinary access to the biggest and most ambitious fusion experiments on the planet, Brian travels to the USA to see a high-security fusion bomb-testing facility in action and is given a tour of the world's most powerful laser. In South Korea, he clambers inside the reaction chamber of K-Star, the world's first supercooled, superconducting fusion reactor, where the fate of future fusion research will be decided.


THU 00:00 Top of the Pops (b0bt4828)
[Repeat of broadcast at 19:30 today]


THU 00:30 Tunes for Tyrants: Music and Power with Suzy Klein (b099229f)
Series 1

World War

Suzy explores the use, abuse and manipulation of music in the Second World War - from swinging jazz to film soundtracks and from mushy ballads to madcap ballets. The war, she demonstrates, wasn't just a military fight but an ideological battle where both sides used music as a weapon to secure their vision for civilisation.

Suzy reveals how the forces' sweetheart Vera Lynn was taken off air by the BBC's 'Dance Music Policy Committee' for fear her sentimental songs undermined the British war effort. But in Nazi Germany, screen siren Zarah Leander had a hit with a song remarkably like Vera's We'll Meet Again. Meanwhile Nazi band Charlie and his Orchestra reworked Cole Porter classics by adding anti-British lyrics to weaken her morale. Though the Nazis banned jazz at home as 'degenerate', Suzy also explores Occupied Paris's incredible jazz scene. And the film revisits concerts given under extraordinary conditions - not least the performance of Wagner's Gotterdammerung' (Twilight of the Gods), which in April 1945 brought the curtain down on the Third Reich.

Despite Hitler's taunt that Britain was 'Das Land ohne Musik' ('The Land without Music'), Suzy reveals the war work of two great British composers. William Walton's Spitfire Prelude became the archetype for a particularly British form of patriotic music. By contrast Michael Tippett was sent to prison for being a conscientious objector, but his anti-war oratorio A Child of Our Time was showcased at the Royal Albert Hall. The right of people to freely express themselves was, after all, what we were fighting for.

For some, music was a way of transcending desperate circumstances. Suzy examines Olivier Messiaen's haunting Quartet for the End of Time, written amid the desolation of a POW camp. But at Auschwitz, Suzy reveals how music was co-opted to serve the Nazis' evil purposes. Cellist Anita Lasker-Wallfisch explains how musical ability saved her from the gas chambers. Drafted into the Auschwitz Women's Orchestra, she had to play marches to drive prisoners to and from work and to give a private performance of Schumann's exquisitely innocent Traumerei to the infamous Dr Mengele.

The events of the 20th century show, Suzy concludes, that though we should continue to love and celebrate music, we should also be wary of its seductive power.


THU 01:30 How to Build a Dinosaur (b014vy5y)
Dinosaurs died out 65 million years ago and we have hardly ever found a complete skeleton. So how do we turn a pile of broken bones into a dinosaur exhibit? Dr Alice Roberts finds out how the experts put skeletons back together, with muscles, accurate postures and even, in some cases, the correct skin colour.


THU 02:35 A Year in the Wild (b01lvh65)
[Repeat of broadcast at 20:00 today]



FRIDAY 30 NOVEMBER 2018

FRI 19:00 World News Today (b0bsrs96)
The latest national and international news, exploring the day's events from a global perspective.


FRI 19:30 Top of the Pops (b0bt49k7)
Gary Davies presents the pop chart programme. First broadcast on 23 October 1986, this edition features The Pretenders, Midnight Star, Housemartins, Billy Idol, Cyndi Lauper, Nick Berry and The Bangles.


FRI 20:00 The Live Lounge Show (b0bt8sm4)
Series 2

George Ezra, Christine and the Queens and more

Clara Amfo takes us behind the scenes of the world-famous Radio 1 Live Lounge - showcasing the biggest names in music, including George Ezra, Christine and the Queens, Halsey, Zara Larsson, Jax Jones and Lewis Capaldi.


FRI 21:00 Proclaimers: This Is the Story (b08w51r4)
In 1987, two brothers from Auctermuchty in Fife released an album called This Is the Story. Featuring songs such as Letter from America, the album propelled The Proclaimers and the Scottish accent into the charts.

Superfan David Tennant talks to Craig and Charlie Reid about 30 years in the business which has taken them from playing small pubs and clubs across Scotland to become one of the nation's most iconic bands.


FRI 22:00 A Musical History (b0bss4sq)
Stevie Wonder: A Musical History

Well-known fans celebrate Stevie Wonder and his music by selecting some of his best-loved songs. Wonder is one of the dominant figures in American music, a multi-faceted genius whose music has permeated popular culture, and he is not short of celebrity fans. His musical achievements are lauded in this anthology of his greatest hits.

Contributors include actor Martin Freeman, singers Alexander O'Neal, James Morrison, Beverley Knight and Corinne Bailey Rae, New Order's Gillian Gilbert and Stephen Morris, DJs Ana Matronic, Trevor Nelson and Norman Jay, Heaven's 17's Glenn Gregory and Martyn Ware, journalist Sian Pattenden and presenter Emma Dabiri.


FRI 23:00 Sharon Osbourne Presents Rock 'n' Roll's Dodgiest Deals (b08rc78x)
Sharon Osbourne presents the story of pop deals through the decades. From Little Richard's half a cent a record to Robbie Williams's £80m deal via notorious bad deals for The Beatles, The Small Faces, The Animals and NWA and great deals for Led Zeppelin, The Police and Moby, Sharon gets the inside story from those still chasing royalties and those who took on the music biz and won.

With The Small Faces, Eric Burdon, The Police, Moby, NWA, Charles Connor (Little Richard's drummer), Art Rupe (aged 99, who signed Little Richard), Pamela Des Barres, Tim Clark (Robbie Williams's manager).


FRI 00:00 Top of the Pops (b0bt49k7)
[Repeat of broadcast at 19:30 today]


FRI 00:30 ... Sings The Beatles (b00ml7p5)
Recorded for the fortieth anniversary of Abbey Road, The Beatles' final album, a journey through the classic and curious covers in the BBC archives.

Featuring Sandie Shaw singing a sassy Day Tripper, Shirley Bassey belting out Something, a close-harmony Carpenters cover of Help!, Joe Cocker's chart-topping With a Little Help from My Friends, Oasis reinventing the Walrus and a little Lady Madonna from Macca himself.

Plus a few 'magical' moments from Candy Flip, The Korean Kittens and Su Pollard.


FRI 01:30 Rollermania: Britain's Biggest Boy Band (b06bbct4)
In 1975, The Bay City Rollers were on the brink of global superstardom. The most successful chart act in the UK with a unique look and sound were about to become the biggest thing since the Beatles. Featuring interviews with Les McKeown and other members of the classic Bay City Roller line-up, and using previously unseen footage shot by members of the band and its entourage, this is the tale of five lads from Edinburgh who became the world's first international teen idols and turned the whole world tartan.


FRI 02:30 The Live Lounge Show (b0bt8sm4)
[Repeat of broadcast at 20:00 today]